The Effects of Social Learning and Internet Ethics of College Students Engaging in Cyberbullying Behavior in Taiwan

Literature Review And Hypothesis Development

A corresponding definition of cyberbullying is “an individual or a group will fully use information and communication involving electronic technologies to facilitate deliberate and repeated harassment or threat to another individual or group by sending or posting cruel text and/or graphics using technological means” (Mason, 2008; Li, 2007). Cyberbullying statistics around the word reveal alarming facts about virtual harassment, its impact, and the many different forms it can take. The bulk of the literature continues to focus on the teenage school environment. For example, Ybarra and Mitchell’s (2004) research found 7% of adolescents reported they have been cyber bullied, compared to 14% in Australia (Campbell, 2005) and 24.9% in Canada (Chu, 2008). To date, limited but growing articles have examined cyberbullying during college years (Reason & Rankin, 2006; MacDonald & Roberts-Pittman, 2010). MacDonald and Roberts-Pittman (2010) indicated that 38% of college students reported knowing someone who had been cyberbullied, 21.9% reported having been cyberbullied, and 8.6% reported cyberbullying someone else. More recently, a survey was released from Cyberbullying Research Center in 2016, which has been collecting data on the subject since 2002. This study surveyed a sample of 5700 middle and high school students between the ages of 12 and 17 in the United States. Approximately 34% of the students reported experiencing cyberbullying in their lifetimes. The same survey conducted by the same organization in 2019, found that school bullying rates increased by 35% from 2016 to 2019.